All Rise...

Editor's Note

The Charge

Music was his passion. Survival was his masterpiece.

Opening Statement

2002's The Pianist, Polish director Roman Polanski's intimate,
intensely personal story set during the Holocaust, arrived in the wake of such
powerful cinematic documents as Shoah, Schindler's List, and 2001's
harrowing The Grey Zone. Given the scope and impact of those works, could
even a master filmmaker like Polanski find something new to say about this
gruesome chapter of human history?

Facts of the Case

This true story of Polish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman, adapted from his
memoir, follows its protagonist (played by Adrien Brody, who won the Best Actor
Oscar for this role) from the German invasion of Poland in 1939 to the
liberation of Warsaw by the Russian Army in 1945. While many of the facts of
this period are well known—Jews being forced to wear armbands, eventually
being driven out of their homes and into a walled-off ghetto, and finally
rounded up and exterminated—Polanski gives us a sense of the day to day
existence of occupied Warsaw. Keeping the focus on the everyday life of the
Warsaw ghetto, Polanski conveys in chilling detail what it must have been like
to live in that city during this time; the mounting terror, the too-slow
realization of what was happening, the claustrophobia and loneliness of living
in hiding.

The Evidence

With all that has been written, said, and filmed about the Holocaust over the
decades, it is no small achievement for Polanski to offer a fresh perspective on
this event, with a film that, unlike the aforementioned examples, focuses on
just one character, and never leaves the Warsaw ghetto. Other filmmakers have
depicted the horror of the concentration camps; Polanski shows us the plight of
the Jews who were left behind.

Polanski, by focusing on the everyday lives of the Polish people, brings the
insanity of the Holocaust to a human level, makes us understand that it was
regular people who perpetrated—and endured—this genocide. This has
the effect of heightening the revulsion and horror at the atrocities we witness.
Like the Polish Jews, we find it hard to imagine that people who could be our
next-door neighbors could commit such acts. For the first time I understand how
someone living in Poland in 1939-1940 might have stayed, instead of escaping
when they had the chance. You just don't imagine monstrous things like this
happening in your country, in your city, in your neighborhood, to you.

Imagine if the United States government decided to exterminate everyone
living in the state of Colorado. It's a ridiculous notion. Who beyond paranoid
types would figure something like this actually happening? But here we see the
noose tightening gradually around these people, with slowly mounting
restrictions, the people still confident that this war will all be over
soon—until it's too late.

Unlike other Holocaust films, which affirm the "resilience of the human
spirit" and show people persevering through hard times by their
determination and imagination, what The Pianist shows us is that life and
death during the Holocaust was mostly random—which is partly what makes it
so horrific. Szpilman is not special, just lucky. Throughout the film, we see
incidents of pointless, random killing. Men are taken in no particular order out
of a labor crew and executed. A woman asks a harmless question of a Nazi officer
and is casually shot in the head. Szpilman survives only because he was in the
right places at the right times and, finally, because he wasn't killed. That's
all.

It explains a great deal to know that Polanski, a survivor of the Holocaust
himself, was only spared from the death camps because his father pushed him
through a barbed-wire fence. There was no reason other than sheer luck that he
survived. That's the fundamental statement of this film; it's a harsh statement,
but an unsparingly honest one.

The Pianist, as one might expect from a film set in war-torn Europe,
does not offer a dazzling visual feast. However, cinematographer Pawel Edelman
uses his limited palette of subdued earth tones to full effect, creating a rich
and often beautiful urban landscape that is faithfully captured on this
anamorphic 1.85:1 widescreen transfer. The image is flawless, with no artifacts
or print defects that I could detect. The audio, presented here in Dolby Digital
and DTS 5.1 tracks, is similarly pristine, and like the visuals of the film are
subtle and subdued.

The most notable supplement on the disc is a 35-minute "making of"
documentary that is well worth watching for its entertaining interviews with
Polanski, Brody, and other members of the team, as well as for its glimpse of
the real Wladyslaw Szpilman. Also included are production notes, cast and crew
filmographies, the film's theatrical trailer, and a promotional clip for the
soundtrack.

The Rebuttal Witnesses

About the only thing I wish this film had had was a bit more of a coda;
Szpilman survives, but we get only a glimpse of how his experiences have changed
him, or how he deals with the guilt of surviving while his entire family was
killed. The character ultimately remains somewhat opaque, his inner thoughts
locked behind a placid mask.

Closing Statement

While it's a little disappointing that this Oscar-endowed film is lacking a
director's commentary track, since there are so many moments in the film that
would have benefited from Polanski's insights, it's a minor quibble in what is
otherwise a solid package. The Pianist is a powerful drama that offers no
comforting Hollywood sentimentality, and even those who think they've seen
enough Holocaust movies will find themselves riveted by this very human
story.

The Verdict

Though the court still wishes to speak with Mr. Polanski on unrelated
charges, he is fully exonerated in this case, as is Mr. Brody, who this court
expects to see great things from in the future. Case dismissed.